Murder in the Library: The Akashic Noir Series

It’s a Noir World, After All

Ex-punk rocker Johnny Temple’s feisty and defiantly political little imprint struck gold of the blackest hue with this string of regionalized collections of noir. Starting way back in 2004 with the publication of Brooklyn Noir (edited by Pete Hamill), the series has become a crime fiction juggernaut, spreading its noirish tentacles all over the world.

No, not all these stories feature private eyes — in fact, very few do. But that in no way diminishes how the deliciously dark, unsettling and wonderful most of them are.

(By the way, this notion that a private eye story can’t be noir is strictly for mouth-breathers and only goes to show how blindered some of these modern-day noiristasare, and how poorly read they are in the very genre they claim to champion.)